Jodie Picoult - Nineteen Minutes

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“Think about it. The common denominator is being humiliated. What’s the strongest memory you have from high school?”

Jordan had to think for a moment before any memory of high school even clouded its way into his mind, much less a salient one. Then he started to grin. “I was in Phys. Ed., and doing a fitness test. Part of it involved climbing a rope that was hung from the ceiling. In high school, I didn’t have quite the massive physique I have now-”

King snorted. “Naturally.”

“-so I was already worried about not making it to the top. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. It was coming back down, because climbing up with the rope between my legs, I got a massive boner.”

“There you go,” King said. “Ask ten people, and half of them won’t even be able to remember something concrete from high school-they’ve blocked it out. The other half will recall an incredibly painful or embarrassing moment. They stick like glue.”

“That is incredibly depressing,” Jordan pointed out.

“Well, most of us grow up and realize that in the grand scheme of life, these incidents are a tiny part of the puzzle.”

“And the ones who don’t?”

King glanced at Jordan. “They turn out like Peter.”

The reason Alex was in Josie’s closet in the first place was because Josie had borrowed her black skirt and never returned it, and Alex needed it tonight. She was meeting someone for dinner-Whit Hobart-her former boss, who’d retired from the public defender’s office. After today’s hearing, where the prosecution had made its motion to have her recused, she needed some advice.

She’d found the skirt, but she’d also found a trove of treasures. Alex sat on the floor with a box open in her lap. The fringe of Josie’s old jazz costume, from lessons she’d taken when she was six or seven, fell into her palm like a whisper. The silk was cool to the touch. It was puddled on top of a faux fur tiger costume that Josie had worn one Halloween and kept for dress-up-Alex’s first and last foray into sewing. Halfway through, she’d given up and soldered the fabric together with a hot glue gun. Alex had planned to take Josie trick-or-treating that year, but she’d been a public defender at the time, and one of her clients had been arrested again. Josie had gone out with the neighbor and her children; and that night, when Alex finally got home, Josie had spilled her pillowcase of candy on the bed. You can take half, Josie told her, because you missed all the fun.

She thumbed through the atlas Josie had made in first grade, coloring every continent and then laminating the pages; she read her report cards. She found a hair elastic and looped it around her wrist. At the bottom of the box was a note, written in the loopy script of a little girl: Deer Mom I love you a lot XOXO.

Alex let her fingers trace the letters. She wondered why Josie still had this in her possession; why it had never been given to its addressee. Had Josie been waiting, and forgotten? Had she been angry at Alex for something and decided not to give it at all?

Alex stood, then carefully put the box back where she’d found it. She folded the black skirt over her arm and headed toward her own bedroom. Most parents, she knew, went through their child’s things in search of condoms and baggies of pot, to try to catch them in the act. For Alex, it was different. For Alex, going through Josie’s possessions was a way of holding on to everything she’d missed.

The sad truth about being single was that Patrick couldn’t justify going to all the bother to cook for himself. He ate most of his meals standing over the sink, so what was the point of making a mess with dozens of pots and pans and fresh ingredients? It wasn’t as if he was going to turn to himself and say, Patrick, great recipe, where’d you find it?

He had it down to a science, really. Monday was pizza night. Tuesday, Subway. Wednesday was Chinese; Thursday, soup; and Friday, he got a burger at the bar where he usually grabbed a beer before heading home. Weekends were for leftovers, and there were always plenty. Sometimes, it got downright lonely ordering (was there any sadder phrase in the English language than Pupu platter for one?), but for the most part, his routine had netted him a collection of friends. Sal at the pizza place gave him garlic knots for free, because he was a regular. The Subway guy, whose name Patrick didn’t know, would point at him and grin. “Hearty-Italian-turkey-cheese-mayo-olives-extra-pickles-salt-and-pepper,” he’d call out, the verbal equivalent of their secret handshake.

This being a Wednesday, he was at the Golden Dragon, waiting for his take-out order to be filled. He watched May ferry it into the kitchen (where on earth did someone buy a wok that big, he always wondered) and turned his attention to the television over the bar, where the Sox game was just beginning. A woman was sitting alone, tearing a fringe around the edge of a cocktail napkin as she waited for the bartender to bring her her drink.

She had her back to him, but Patrick was a detective, and there were certain things he could figure out just from this side of her. Like the fact that she had a great ass, for one, and that her hair needed to be taken out of that librarian’s bun so that it could wave around her shoulders. He watched the bartender (a Korean named Spike, which always struck Patrick as funny after the first Tsingtao) opening up a bottle of pinot noir, and he filed away this information, too: she was classy. Nothing with a little paper umbrella in it, not for her.

He sidled up behind the woman and handed Spike a twenty. “My treat,” Patrick said.

She turned, and for a fraction of a second, Patrick stood rooted to the spot, wondering how this mystery woman could possibly have Judge Cormier’s face.

It reminded Patrick of being in high school and seeing a friend’s mom from a distance across a parking lot and automatically checking her out as a Potential Hot Babe until he realized who it actually was. The judge plucked the twenty-dollar bill out of Spike’s hand and gave it back to Patrick. “You can’t buy me a drink,” she said, and she pulled some cash out of her pocketbook and handed it to the bartender.

Patrick sat down on the stool beside her. “Well, then,” he said. “You can buy me one.”

“I don’t think so.” She glanced around the restaurant. “I really don’t think we ought to be seen talking.”

“The only witnesses are the koi in the pond by the cash register. I think you’re safe,” Patrick said. “Besides, we’re just talking. We’re not talking about the case. You do still remember how to make conversation outside a courtroom, don’t you?”

She picked up her glass of wine. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Patrick lowered his voice. “I’m running a drug bust on the Chinese mafia. They import raw opium in the sugar packets.”

Her eyes widened. “Honestly?”

“No. And would I tell you if it were true?” He smiled. “I’m just waiting for my take-out order. What about you?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

He didn’t realize, until she’d said it, that he’d been enjoying her company. He got a kick out of flustering her, which, truthfully, wasn’t really all that hard. Judge Cormier reminded him of the Great and Powerful Oz: all bluster and bells and whistles, but when you pulled back the curtain, she was just an ordinary woman.

Who happened to have a great ass.

He felt heat rise to his face. “Happy family,” Patrick said.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what I ordered. I was just trying to help you out with that casual conversation thing again.”

“You only got one dish? No one goes to a Chinese restaurant and only gets one dish.”